For those who do not live in metro Detroit, we have been entertained for several years now with a string of politicians in the dock on corruption charges. After serving prison time on state charges, former Mayor Kilpatrick, and several cronies, are now facing Federal racketeering charges. The trial goes to the jury today.

The local media pointed out yesterday that, while legions of pols were on trial for taking bribes, no one was on trial for paying the bribes.

One of the previous cases involved bribes paid to local officials by Synagro to haul away sludge from the city sewage treatment facilities. The local Synagro executive pled guilty to paying a few hundred thousand dollars in bribes to Detroit officials and served 11 months in the jug. But the higher ups at Synagro, and it's parent company, Carlyle Group? Nope. No charges. Guess the local guy who pled guilty was just a "rogue employee" who must have filched the $200,000 out of the paperclip money, without the knowledge or consent of any higher ups.

Carlyle and Synagro escape charges

Before his bribery trial early this year, political consultant Sam Riddle asked Detroit’s FBI chief, “Andrew Arena, if you’re so damn bad, why don’t you go after the Carlyle-Synagro group? You can convict underlings like [Synagro executive] James Rosendall or [Synagro consultant] Rayford Jackson. They’re nothing. Deal with people on the board, like the Bxxx family, and then see where you get.”

Even worse than the actual settlements was the explanation Breuer offered for them. "In the world today of large institutions, where much of the financial world is based on confidence," he said, "a right resolution is to ensure that counter-parties don't flee an institution, that jobs are not lost, that there's not some world economic event that's disproportionate to the resolution we want."

In other words, Breuer is saying the banks have us by the balls, that the social cost of putting their executives in jail might end up being larger than the cost of letting them get away with, well, anything.

Well sure the US may not want to trim the herd of institutions buying up its budget deficit (deficits don't matter, right?)... or providing 10000s of jobs.

How does that mandate not jailing criminal executives (who presumably are easily replaced with new, hopefully better ones) though?